Thursday, May 7, 2009

The Book Tag!

1) What author do you own the most books by?Hemingway, Milan Kundera, Ayn Rand

2) What book do you own the most copies of?Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown. I bought a copy in 2006 and friends and relatives have gifted the book to me twice till now; and I also have the eBook. So, I’ve got four copies.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?Not really

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?Francisco D’anconia (Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand), Richard Kane (The Prodigal Daughter, by Jeffrey Archer)

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?Four books I never get tired of reading…Speedpost (the letters in the book I could so relate to and were an important part of my adolescence), We the Living (especially for Kira and Andrei), Buri Ai’r Hadhu (a collection of stories by Lakhinath Bezbaruah), the complete short stories by Guy de Maupassant.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?I loved “Swiss Family Robinson” and “Buri Ai’r Hadhu”.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?By the river Piedra, I sat down and wept. (B-O-R-I-N-G!)

8) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?“The Sea and the Jungle”, by H.M.Tomlinson and Carson McCullers’ “The heart is a lonely hunter”, and "Ignorance", by Milan Kundera.

9) If you could force everyone to read one book, what would it be?“Anthem”-Ayn Rand

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?Amitav Ghosh…I love travel literature (I don’t mean travel guides here), and the journeys he depicts in his books, the characters so profound and their intermingling…the research that precedes the writing of the book shows in the authenticity of the era portrayed in his novels, the language, the narrative…he’s far ahead of his contemporaries, cashing on in the same topics of NRIs, corruption etc. He’s a refreshing change.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?The Class- Erich Segal

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?Any of the chick lit books plaguing the market these days.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.It was way back in school days. There was these J-17 series that were hidden in our library, and I found one of the books in the series, “Too hot to Handle” (can’t get cheesier than this!), about two best friends holidaying in Greece. There is this character, Karl, in the book…and I fantasized about being his girlfriend throughout the last year of my school.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?A chick lit novel, “Trust Me” that I got last year.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?Mrs. Dalloway, when the movie “The Hours” released. But I couldn’t grasp even half of it then.

16) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?Shakespeare

17) Austen or Eliot?Austen

18) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?I have hardly read any science fiction novels. I discovered the works of Rabindranath Tagore, Henry James only recently. And I haven’t read War and Peace and Ulysses yet!!

19) What is your favorite novel?I can’t pinpoint just one novel. I’m still discovering amazing works every year. This year I found travel literature dating back to the early 18th century. So much more to read…

Now that you mention, Eric Segal's class will be a good movie,with the entire gamut of hollywood emotions.P.S.- Let's start a Amitav Ghosh fan club :-), but I get to ruffle his gray hair first.I will let you hold his hands though.